


this silence is mine

by Eon-Flamewing (eonflamewing)



Category: Elsword (Video Game)
Genre: Angel Corruption, Death, Gen, Introspection, semi-au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-29 01:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13916244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eonflamewing/pseuds/Eon-Flamewing
Summary: Haunted by a song from the abyss, Richter decides to take matters into his own hands.Alternatively: If you kill yourself, is it murder, or is it suicide?(Stream-of-consciousness style fic.)





	this silence is mine

It is said that heaven is a beautiful place.

A land of the pure, filled with spires and streets beyond the purvey of human masons, each inhabited by angels and those that touch virtue by their faith. A place that humans reach when they die, an eternal paradise… the aspiration of every mortal.

Of course, that is a lie.

Gods do not care for humanity. Humans do not deserve mercy, because they never learn from their past.

— heaven is an empty place. A realm without shape or form, filled with the glittering mist of entities beyond the perception of human eyes. The song of creation weaves a haunting refrain in the silence, pressing down with the insistence of water, the lightness of wind.

Another song sounds from below, a separate realm chained not by gravity but by a veil stretched like muslin, a gate that no saint should pass; but he has a task in his hands, and it will be done.

And so,  light passes into  darkness.

 

\---

 

Just like heaven, the void sings.

It does not cut like the voice of divinity. Instead, its refrains are far more subtle, a rolling foghorn that trembles against a person’s body instead of ears, a melody far older than time. The song resounds with his core, deepening as he descends. A whisper becomes an insistent voice, and then a chorus that clutches at his perception - dark and tainted.

Such filth cannot be tolerated, so he cleanly bisects the grasping shadow with a flare of light. The void parts unwillingly beneath his projected blades, overpowered by his divinity as a servant of creation. There is something that he must seek out in the abyss - a mistake that had split off from him in the past lingers here, and it must be corrected.

It does not flee. Naturally, there would be no escape from an executioner that no longer obeyed the rules of time, but there’s a certain audacity to be said in the way that it stays put, waiting. Perhaps it knew, all along. Finality would come, even in a realm where time itself twisted beyond recognition.

He dives through the void as a meteor would, a streak of bright  blue in an endless ocean of  black.

 

\---

 

The angel comes.

He can feel the other’s presence as soon as  he crosses the veil and into the void. They are one and the same, after all - there was no reason to deny the inevitable. The whisper lingers at the edge of  his mind, just as how he is sure it does the same in the  other’s; a reminder of their double existence. 

They would find each other eventually. The song from the other side steals into their souls and lures them close, even if they try to resist. It mattered naught to  him, just as how everything else mattered naught within the far edge of time. But the same cannot be said for the other -  he was always the more proactive one, after all. Even though their hands were stained with the same amount of blood, he had taken up its banner with a more distinct fervour.

He is what he could have been - a vessel for a higher will, a tool that did another’s bidding. The light of  divinity filled the cracks where  despair would have taken hold, melting away all traces of free thought and sculpted his form into a transcendental beauty. Yet, he is just as lifeless as the thing that he now hunts with single-minded persistence; two  dolls dancing to different  tunes.

At last, they meet again.

 

\---

 

If  he still had a heart, he might have felt a cathartic sense of anticipation.

But he did not, so his face is instead described by a frigid tint of disapproval. The form that hovers before him could be called an  abomination, yet the term did not feel strong enough for what it is. A disgrace, reject, crumpled piece of scrap, the scum of the world itself. So consumed by darkness that it was beyond even a shred of hope for  salvation —

— and as he looks into its  eyes, he feels a sharp sting in his core. The void song shrieks into a crescendo, digging its claws into the back of his chest. At last, he has found the source of these whispers that haunt him day and night, grinding imperfection and weakness into a tool meant to be infallible. Even now, it reaches out to him, shadows pooling into the shapes of hands, grasping at his  light in invitation.

He pays no heed to it. Only mortals feel hatred. Angels instead feel righteousness.

No words are needed. They understand each other perfectly, every movement watched by eyes of  blue and  green, neither willing to take the first move. There they remain, floating in a sea dark as night, poised in a perfect balance.

There are two, but there can only be  one. One silence, never enough for them both.

 

「 If  death be the  salvation for all things…

… then it is my right to slay you. 」

 

The song weaves light and shadow around them, drowning out all other thought.  He moves on reflex, a directive pulling on his limbs with invisible strings. A sword crystallizes above his hand, shining with an intensity that scorches the blackness around them. The fabric of reality itself recoils from him, the authority of the divine burning all that is  wrong with this space, with his very  existence — the voice that he never wanted to hear.

The projection blade passes clean through the hole in  his chest, splitting the pulsing abomination within. Green mist spurts forth from the wound, glowing with a lurid, sickly  light. He does not struggle as his essence bleeds out, a dull perception of pain pricking at the edges of his awareness. It seems that even an embodiment of death could not escape the finality that it bestowed - he had no shell to shed, no disguise to leave behind; only his core remained. It shatters into myriads of pieces, shards of  eyes and  crystal that spray out into the void around them.

Perhaps, an angel can only be truly  killed by one of his own kind.

The black tide surges out of  his broken form and through the blade of light, filling radiant outlines with a deep dark pitch. He watches as  his expression finally changes, a brief flash of emotion on a face that had remained frozen for centuries - polished hatred fading into surprise and then seized by a desperate indignation. Flowers bloom from within the angel’s chest, thorns sprouting in a wild burst of vines and  blackened petals. The roses rip into his robes, leaving liquid trails of glittering  ice-blue; the same colour as his eyes.

The taint coats him, a fine veneer of bitterness that spreads over his body and stains his robes black. The screams of the void are replaced by a single voice - his own, choked by fear, despair, and then an all-consuming madness. He clutches at his body in desperation, willing light to flood from his fingertips and flush the fouled visions away - but even the power of creation turns from him, his halo of light crumbling into dust.

The light of the goddess had always seemed cold, especially when compared to the soft glow of those who had shown him kindness. Despite it all, the humans had accepted him, taken him in as one of their own. They could not save him from the chaos that ate at his soul, but they did not desert him - unlike the goddess. She who made her puppets in the manner of humans also treated them as humans; disposable, imperfect, unnecessary.

With his waning strength, he presses the caustic realization into the other’s form, watching black flame burn up his wings of white and blue. All must return to the void, all must end - and if a reaper must die, then he will bring his slayer to the gate with him.

(Despite everything, it’s still  you.)

At last, the song fades. Gone are the melodies that thrum against the cores that were their hearts, whispering promises of  justice and  salvation. In their place is an emptiness that runs even deeper than the will of the  goddess and the call of the  abyss; almost poetic, embracing the two broken angels as they fall — down, down, down.

  
  


this silence is mine.

**Author's Note:**

> I could not get 'This Silence is Mine' from Drakengard 3 out from my head, so this was the result.
> 
> I have not written for almost two years, so this is a 'return work' of sorts. It has been fun playing with AO3's colour skins, so that I can differentiate the two Ains without breaking the overall language theme of the piece.


End file.
